Twice this week police have been called to a home in eastern Boulder County managed by Erie Mayor Joe Wilson, who cut the lock on an entrance gate and videotaped a tenant inside the house as she asked him repeatedly to leave.

Karol Hopper, who has lived at the property in the 1400 block of North 111th Street for 10 years, said Wilson is in the midst of trying to get her and her daughter evicted so that he can sell the property. But she said her lease lasts until November and that the mayor has no right to have her removed.

"We've never done anything wrong here -- all we've done are improvements," Hopper said Friday, as she pored over several "notice of lease termination" letters she has received.

She demonstrated what occurred at her home Wednesday afternoon, when she said she was talking to a 911 operator as Wilson stood at her door, yelling at her and trying to turn the handle. Hopper, a 65-year-old retired hairdresser, said she is intimidated by the mayor and has been driven to tears over the past week.

"I said, 'Joe, you're not coming in,'" said Hopper, who also called police when Wilson came to her home the previous day. "And he's standing there with his camera."

While no charges were filed against Wilson, a Boulder County sheriff's deputy wrote in a report that Hopper had a valid lease to the home and that Wilson had "no right to enter the home at this time and would have to wait until the eviction process is complete." The Sheriff's Office labeled the confrontation a civil dispute, and the case was closed.

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Wilson said he was simply exercising his duties as the property owner's agent and letting Hopper know she was in violation of the lease terms, including illegally boarding horses, failing to pay rent on time and running an electric line from the home to a trailer outside. He warned her she had several days to correct the issues or face eviction.

The mayor said he cut the chain on the driveway gate because it was blocking proper egress and ingress on and off the property and posed a fire hazard.

"This is a private eviction process, and the lease violators chose to put themselves in this situation," Wilson said Friday. "Anyone who's had rentals occasionally runs into a situation where tenants decide to black out windows with spray paint, run up astronomical electric bills, change locks out, create electrical fire hazards and code violations, then top it off by not paying rent -- it happens. If they correct the violations, then, of course, their lease is reinstated."

'Thorn in his side'

Hopper disputes the validity of the accusations against her. She said horses have been on the property for decades and that she uses manure as fertilizer on her fields and surrounding properties. For a decade, there was no issue with the way she kept up her home until Wilson became involved with the property in January, she said.

"It's always been a horse property; it's always been a farm," she said.

Hopper is convinced the mayor is trying to pressure her out of her home so that he can chase the larger goal of bringing commercial development to the southeast corner of Arapahoe Road and U.S. 287.

Now, Erie is bound by a 20-year-old intergovernmental agreement with Lafayette and Boulder County to preserve the corner as rural. But that agreement expires at the end of next year, and Wilson has indicated that the town may not extend it, telling the Camera in December that "Erie must be sovereign in its own land-use issues now and into the future."

Hopper said Wilson wants to assemble parcels at the corner, annex them into Erie and make the area ripe for developers. The town recently purchased two parcels near Hopper's home through its urban renewal authority and lists the corner on its website as a "retail development opportunity."

"He wants us out of his way because we're a thorn in his side," Hopper said. "He just wants us out so he can do whatever he wants."

But Wilson, who was first elected in 2010 and re-elected in April, said he is a real estate investor and that his dealings with Hopper represent nothing more than a typical tenant-landlord dispute.

"The property is not in my town and it's not adjacent to any properties owned by the town," Wilson said. "Of course, they're going to make the claim that it's a conflict of interest. But a conflict of what interest? I don't have any more rights than anybody else, but I don't have any less rights."

Erie rejected buying parcel in December

Bob Miller, Hopper's attorney, said he found Wilson's interest in the property where his client lives "peculiar." The Erie Urban Renewal Authority, which is comprised of the Erie Board of Trustees, voted unanimously in December not to buy the property from long-time owner James McBride. Wilson was absent for the vote.

"Remarkably, within a matter of days, there's this other company trying to buy it -- with the mayor as the agent," Miller said, noting that Wilson has access to information about the town's real estate plans that few others have. "That's way beyond an appearance of a conflict of interest, in my opinion."

Wilson lists himself as an agent, principal and co-listing broker for the property's new owner, Cheyenne, Wyo.-based MCB Trust. And a deed of trust filed Dec. 31, 2012, with Boulder County shows McBride making an interest-free $260,000 loan to MCB for the property, to be repaid by June 20.

Hopper said the loan due to McBride in less than four months explains why Wilson is trying to get her out of the home so quickly.

"He has to sell this property to get the money to pay for this," she said.

But Wilson said he has no buyer at this point and couldn't possibly guess who might be interested. He said he has dealt fairly with Hopper, following the legal steps he needs to follow in his dispute with her and giving her the chance to correct her violations before sending her packing.

He is being unfairly targeted, he said, because of his public office.

"You wouldn't write about this for any other private citizen, and it should be the same for me," the mayor said.

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